Edmonton Journal from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada • 3

EDMONTON JOURNAL edortonjojmai.cofn SUNDAY, MAY 22, 2011 A3 1950 monster fire burned its way into history Some thought Alberta's worst blaze was the result of an atomic war and increasingly behaving in chaotic and unpredictable ways. Some recent fires in Alberta have been so hot they created their own weather, producing thunderstorms and lightning that in some cases started other fires. Others, such as the one at Slave Lake this week, burn in a way in which they completely torch one stand of trees or houses and leave another row nearby intact. This is not all that unusual, says Mike Flannigan, a professor with the Department of Renewable Resources at the University of Alberta and a senior research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service. "Imagine if you will a fire moving like a corkscrew set on its side.

On one side you have this updraft that intensifies the fire and draws the flames up into the crowns of the trees. "On the other side, you can have a downdraft that pushes the fire away from that area. The result is that one can have treesbuildings in the updraft blackened, while immediately adjacent trees that were in the downdraft are left green and unharmed." Like Murphy, Flannigan believes that the future could be a challenging one for firefighters if we don't find new ways of managing our forests. estruzikG edmontonjournal.com The future of forest fires Sunday Reader Fl FD S1RI Z1K journal Staff riter I 1 1 ON The beginning of what some people thought was the end of the world started on June 2, 1950, with a small wildfire in the northeast corner of British Columbia. It had been an exceptionally hot spring and forest fire managers were too busy with other fires in B.C., Alberta and the southern Yukon to do anything about a blaze that was remote and so far away from human settlement The policy back then was to ignore fires that were 1 5 kilometres away from roads or human settlements.

Within a few days, though, the fire crossed into Alberta's Chinchaga wild lands. Fuelled by a tinder dry forest that seemingly went on forever, the relatively small blaze dev eloped into a wildfire of such monstrous proportions that the thickness of the smoke led some people in Ontario to believe that an atomic bomb had exploded and that the western world was at war with Russia. Aircraft were grounded. Fanners milked their cows earlier, chickens went to roost and the U.S. air force postponed a search for a missing plane.

The blaze burned for 222 days and torched a stretch of forest that was 245 kilometres long. It was and still is the biggest forest fire to hit Canada in modern times. More than 14,000 square kilometres of forest went up in flames. near enough to the surface to etch a lasting trace that belied our outward calm." Peter Murphy, the former dean of forestry at the University of Alberta, was working on a ranch outside of Reno, New, at the time. He recalls newspapers in California writing about the great fire north of the border.

Murphy and Cordy Tymstra, the supervisor of the Wildfire Science and Research Unit at Alberta Sustainable Resources, have written scientific papers on the event. "It's a classic example of what a fire can do if it's left on its own," says Murphy. "It should serve to remind us that when it comes to forest fires, we can be complacent, but only at our peril." Having been associated with the Alberta Forest Service for good part of his long career, Murphy may be biased in saying that the province has one of the best forest fire management systems in the world. But he believes that the system is going to have to find ways of adapting to the new reality that is evoking in the boreal forest. Climate models suggest we are going to see hotter temperatures, more lightning strikes and fires similar to the one at Slave Like this week that move quickly.

Murphy is not alone in speculating that firefighters are already seeing blazes that are hotter, moving faster It's a classic example of hat a fire can do if left on its own. It should serve to remind us that when it comes to forest fires, we can be complacent, but only at our own peril. 5 homier of A forestry dean feter Murphv were being caught by darkness, so they scurried back across the cow yard in more than usual earnest, their heads moving in delayed jerks." One elderly man in the town of Busti in New York State was so frazzled when a relative went in to check on him, he was shaking like a leaf. "Do you think this is the end of the world?" he asked. "Everyone remembers what he was doing when he heard that President Kennedy had been shot, that Pearl Harbor was bombed or that either world war had ended," local historian Norman Carlson wrote in the Jamestown Post Journal.

"So too everyone my age and older remembers another event: a Sunday afternoon in 1950 when the sun ceased to give her light and our primitive fears of darkness, mortality and powerlessness rose at least I ill -ill. Downtown protest XT i I Slave Lake residents may get look at burned-out town this weekend i X-. r- Smoke from the fire could be detected as far away as Great Britain and Holland. The heat was so intense in spots that it changed the chemistry of the soil to the point where trees could not regenerate. "Anyone who witnessed it, as I did, the great smoke pall of September 24 to 30, 1950 can never forget the eeriness of the occurrence and the extraordinary gloom," Canadian astronomer Helen Swayer Hogg wrote in The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 15 years later.

"The sun was turned to various shades of blue or iolet over much of the eastern part of the continent." The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star newspapers wrote articles and published illustrations explaining why the city of Toronto had to turn on the street lights at midday. It was not an alien invasion as some people feared. Nor was it an eclipse of the sun, as others believed. But in places such as Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Fort Erie and New York, it was so dark that the lights at baseball stadiums had to be turned on to illuminate mid-aftemoon ball games. An article in the New York Times quoted one woman who told how her rooster was so confused it crowed at 4 p.m., thinking it was dawn.

Another article in a Jamestown, N.Y., paper described how chickens that had spread out for their midday foraging "suddenly realized they Among those issues are the safety of water, waste, electricity and gas utilities in the community. "These folks want to get back home," Booth said. "They don't know when they're going back home, which obviously causes a lot of anxiety for people. "Unfortunately we don't have that answer either." She said officials are working on the matter non-stop, trying to find answers, and find ways to let people safely back into the community. Safety first "Putting anyone in danger is not an option," she said.

Evacuated Canyon Creek resident Rod MacKay said he understands why officials are still keeping people out of the community, but he also sees why people are growing frustrated. "It's human nature. We all have different ways of dealing with things," he said. "I'm not frustrated. I'm just going to go on with life." Meanwhile, Booth says officials are working to answer the hundreds of questions flooding in to government offices from the thousands of displaced residents.

"As soon as we get those answers, we are going to let them know," she says. "And the reason they don't have answers is because we don't have answers." jprudenfl edmontonjournal.com I III I on-t mcironi ct imdai ANA G. PRl'DFN journal Staff Writer AT SCA Displaced residents of Slave Lake will have an opportunity to view areas of their community ravaged by fires last weekend, as long as emergency officials believe the tours can take place safely. Bus tours of the area could begin as early as Sunday. The possibility of the tours was announced at a town-hall meeting at the Athabasca evacuation centre on Saturday, and similar meetings were held at other evacuation centres elsewhere in the province.

The media were prohibited from entering the meetings, but those in attendance said tensions ran We're not in anyone's time to assess magnitude. Government iv-1 li z5 -X and been abandoned, and was empty when it was hit by a semi. Capt. Justin Zahara was dispatched to the collision call. When it was over, he got a couple of hours of sleep before heading out to Slave Lake to relieve the other Athabasca crew, who had, by then, been fighting the Slave Lake fire for 12 hours.

Athabasca's volunteer firefighters worked at the Slave Lake fire until they were no longer needed there, until professional firefighters from around the province and country arrived in the town to deal with the fire. The Athabasca firefighters went back to their day jobs. Mathieu said the fire has left the Athabasca firefighters with a lot to I A -A trying to stand way, but it takes a situation of this 5 9 spokesperson Nikki Bootli A few hundred people marched from the Chinese Elders' Mansion to City Hall on Saturday to protest the route of the proposed LRT expansion through downtown. Volunteer firefighters orked until relieved then ent to work FIRE Continued from Al "It was devastation. All the houses that you knew were there, were gone.

Big, big houses. And smoke, lots of smoke." Then, at midnight, there was another emergency for the Athabasca firefighters. Calls started coming in about a bad car accident on the highway between Athabasca and Slave Lake. Another Athabasca crew headed out to that call. The firefighters found a car ripped almost in half lying in the ditch, and the men spent almost an hour looking for the driver's body in the dark.

They learned later that the vehicle Sew 1 T-tA A JOHN LUCAS THE JOURNAL think about. Wildfire season is not over, and Mathieu says he's working on a list of things his department needs and a plan that would help if a wildfire came close to Athabasca. "And we're not selling that old truck," he adds. "That thing never stopped running." On Saturday morning, the first day of the May long weekend, members of the volunteer department spent the day at their modest firehall. They are getting ready for an open house next weekend celebrating the 1 00th anniversary of the department, and, as always, waiting for the next call.

"I think it's my idea of helping," Zahara says. "It's just what we do." jprudenfi edmontonjournal.com Sapphire and Throat Space for Quilting system 5- i 1 1 otc Easy with Husqvarna Viking high inside, as evacuees voiced growing dissatisfaction with not being able to get back into their community. Some officials and evacuees were clearly distraught as they left Saturday's meeting. Vsking for patience Nikki Booth, a spokeswoman for the Government of Alberta, said frustration is understandable, but she urged people to be patient. "We are working on this," she said.

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